10. This Is Not a Divorce; They Want Me Dead!
By Gang Xu, Ph.D.
December 6, 2019 | Updated May 26, 2020
December 6, 2019 | Updated May 26, 2020
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I was in my early fifties. These were the ages when knowledge, experience and sensation had all come together and formed a person’s peak stage of judgment and decision making. In the course of my divorce, those incidents and coincidences—some subtle some apparently trivial—had triggered my survival instinct, which in turn guided many of my responses that later turned out to be stunningly prescient. I am not sure if I would still be physically alive now if I were ten years younger then.
From October 2016 on, I had one hearing in front of Judge Maureen Monks, on 10/05/2016, where I was brutally abused; I had another hearing in front her, on 11/30/2016, where I realized that I had been fooled by her earlier words; I had a hoax hearing at Malden District Court on 11/15/2016; I had a discovery meeting, on 11/22/2016, where I was physically, verbally, and linguistically intimidated by the Discovery Master appointed by Judge Maureen Monks; I had a failed attempt to retrieve a copy of the hearing tape for either of my first two hearings in front of Judge Maureen Monks, as someone in Middlesex County Probate and Family Court deliberately concealed or curtailed the critical hearing contents. These in 2016 culminated with the 12/08/2016 hearing where Judge Maureen Monks conspired and defrauded with ex-wife’s attorney to obstruct justice. Clearly my case was highly rigged, and, appallingly, the maneuver against me appeared highly orchestrated, involving several people in two separate courts. I was like a piece of fresh meat on a chopping block, waiting to be sliced or trimmed as they desired. If the meat still had a nerve that refused to die and showed the pulsation of life, they would ruthlessly sever the never to tame the meat. But being at fifties also meant I was more pragmatic. By late November 2016, I already decided to surrender; I made my intention known in the two hearings around then. I just could not fight with so many people, well-coordinated; I had to cut loss and move on. But I was soon confronted with a chilling finding, on or about 12/10/2016, that altered my life forever. As I was preparing for my trial, I started to review and sorted through all the documented information that might be used as exhibits. One part of it was when and how ex-wife’s attorney became involved and if and how he was paid (the attorney claimed that he had not been paid any retainer by ex-wife). For the latter question, I was counting on the next meeting with the Discovery Master to get ex-wife’s bank statements. I had been the owner of the cell phone account that included the line for the ex-wife. I retrieved the past statements online and singled out the calls between the ex-wife and her attorney. When I tabulated the data, somehow a mysterious incident a year earlier surfaced in my mind. I told the ex-wife my decision to divorce on 10/16/2015. To avoid anything emotional, I soon left our apartment home and used my office as the temporary lodging. I went back home about once a week, usually on the late night of Friday, to do laundry overnight and to cook a week’s load of meals the next morning. I bought a membership in a gym not far away from my office so I could take a shower every day. The second weekend of December 2015 (12/11/2015—12/13/2015) was unusually busy for me, as my students in private boarding schools would soon leave schools and go back to China for Christmas and New Year holidays. I needed to make sure they did not run into any problem; I also needed to come up with some individualized tutoring courses for a couple of students in the break. I did not have time going back home on Friday night as before. On Tuesday, 12/15/2015, I received an email from our apartment management office, demanding that we see them the next day, as a follow-up to an earlier notice that asked us to see them the previous day. After further inquiry, I learned that our apartment had produced loud noise of the “jack hammering or banging” type over the weekend, starting on the late night of the past Friday and continuing in the early morning. It sounded odd, since the ex-wife was a quiet person and she was not physical. But the complaints were from several neighbors, both on the same floor and the floor below. And noises occurred more than once. I asked the ex-wife about the noises. She replied that she did not understand either. She told me she had already gone to the management office on Monday around the time when the office was about to close; apparently she had talked to a wrong person. She saw the office in the afternoon of Wednesday, 12/16/2015. On 12/17/2015, I went to the office to follow up. When I pressed for more details, the office staffer started to be cautious and hesitant, telling me that the noises sounded "like people are fighting in the room.” It sounded too outlandish to me. I did not spend another second thinking about it any more. I totally forgot the incident until a year later, when I looked into the timing of the two major calls from the ex-wife to her attorney. One was started at 2:11 pm on Monday, 12/14/2015, and the other at 3:01 pm on Wednesday, 12/16/2015. Both calls were made on the days when we were required to see the office to explain the noises, before the ex-wife actually went to the office, which opened between 3 pm—5 pm in the afternoon. So the incident of the “fight-like noises” was managed by ex-wife’s attorney. On 02/01/2017, another staffer in the apartment management office confirmed to me that “I remember them saying it sounded like fighting,” referring to the complaints by the neighbors. Our apartment building was installed with security cameras system. A domestic violence claim wouldn’t be able to sustain itself merely on the impression of the neighbors if the camera didn’t see my entry to the building. What if I had returned home on the night of Friday, 12/11/2015, or in the morning of Saturday, 12/12/2015? They wanted to manufacture a criminal out of me! Once you figure out this, you would immediately understand the significance of a stealthy restraining order (RO) at Malden District Court in the summer of 2016. People in the U.S. tend to dismiss the thought of “conspiracy”—by default—as something politically incorrect. In Chinese society, calculation and conspiracy however is a quality that is highly valued and practiced by some “smart” people, as exemplified by the “36 Stratagems.” Ignoring such a reality is not a productive way of looking into or working with Chinese elites. In the past two decades, haven’t Americans paid enough in learning this? One stratagem is the use of a third party to deliver a devastating blow, called “killing with a borrowed knife.” In China, law enforcement and prosecutorial investigations are often invoked by people with access to such resources, even in civil disputes. Huawei, China’s controversial tech giant, is currently in the news for its mobilization of law enforcement in false imprisonment of a laid-off employee for 251 days for disputes over a severance package. In power competition among CCP leaders, use of disciplinary or judicial protocols has been very effective in forcing an adversary into suicide. The word “suicide” in China has evolved into a transitive verb to characterize a design that sets a person into suicide. I was a very motivated small business owner in the independent schools community. Over past years, I had invested all my time and available financial resources in growing my business. My value was my business brand and my name. If I had been falsely incriminated for domestic violence, my business would have crumbled and my reputation as an educator would have been destroyed. I would have ended up with no other choice but “being suicided” the first day out of the jail, just to save my last dignity. But the ex-wife is not the person to assign blame. For various reasons, even today, domestic violence claim is not seriously treated in China. She was just an average woman from China. However, her sister, her attorney and people at Malden District Court should know the consequence of a domestic violence charge to a professional. I would have let it go if it were just a one-time “do-it-yourself” setup in December 2015. The stealthy RO issued at Malden District Court and deliberate concealing of my first hearing tape at Middlesex County Probate and Family Court had totally changed the nature of the play. And there were two strange incidents in summer 2016. On or about 06/22/2016, I came back to my office at noon. An unexpected young man was waiting at the door. He claimed he was a community college graduate and would like to use some service to apply to a four-year college. He spoke perfect English, though with an accent of Boston traditional Chinese-American community. He was clearly very knowledgeable about college application and told me a great story; his communication skills and manner indicated that he had already received above-average college education. When asked how he learned of my business, he said he found me through my business website. Well, my business website made it clear that my services were orientated towards the needs of students and families from China and I met with prospective clients by appointment only (for which I had an online contact form on the website). I initially thought he was a business competitor disguised as a potential client, but something was just not right... The other incident occurred in early August, after I moved out Malden. On one evening, I came out my office building for home. I was followed by a woman who had waited in a bus stop shelter near my office building. On 01/19/2017, at a big loss, I quietly sold my brand new business SUV that had been purchased half a year ago in expectation of growing business travels. Four days later I fled Boston to Taiwan, in such a panic that I forgot to pick up the camera on the dining table. I planned to seek a temporary asylum in Taiwan and make public accusations against those who had criminally violated me (I was prohibited from contacting law enforcement and MIT regarding ex-wife and her daughter under Judge Maureen Monks’ temporary order). But I had to come back three weeks later as Taiwan did not grant asylum. I have since been living a semi-hiding life, making survival my first priority while working on my public accusation. After suspending it for three years, I officially closed my business in September 2019, after its tenth anniversary. I would start to shudder involuntarily at the thought of someone reading my series behind that closed door at Malden District Court, or a murky figure lurking somewhere in the dark, studying me silently. |
Clouds building up over Fellsmere Park, Malden, MA.
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